The uk despite being an island smaller than wyoming used to command the globe
and not even that long ago barely more than one queen elizabeth in the past in 1913 the british
empire governed over 400 million people 23 of the world population at the time and by 1920
it covered a quarter of the earth's total land area just imagine how ridiculous it would be
if in a hundred years wyoming gathered up all their cattle and took over the world
every country would suddenly look like this at one point the british empire directly controlled
afghanistan and tiguan barbados australia the bahamas bahrain vanuatu yemen zambia and zimbabwe
ever since australia was added in 1788 the sun is shown on some corner of the british empire
one day searching nearly two and a half centuries but australia would eventually leave
as well as most everyone else of the 195 countries in the world 163 celebrate some
form of independence day and more than a third of them celebrate independence from britain
but after world war ii and the subsequent breakup of the colonies the empire was no more so with the
empire losing nearly all of its members surely the sun must have finally set on the british empire
well actually it hasn't and it might never many newly independent british colonies draw
into the commonwealth of nations some like canada and australia have queen elizabeth as
their official monarch they're still independent states that just happen to have the same queen
today the once great empire has been whittled down to just 14 colonies and gila bermuda the british
antarctic and indian ocean territories the virgin cayman and falkland islands gibraltar montessarat
the piccarion islands saint helena south georgia a criterion decalia and the turks and caicos
so with these 14 colonies will the sun ever set on the british empire
well in about 7.5 billion years the sun will swell to more than 200 times its current size
swallowing the earth and destroying everything we hold dear including the british empire but that's
kind of cheating so what about before that well countries do leave the empire fairly often with
hong kong being handed off or i mean liberated by the people's republic of china when the clock
struck midnight on july 1st of 1997. basically countries trade 6.5 million people like we trade
baseball cards even if all borders stayed the same the sun probably wouldn't set for a few millenia
even if you don't count the british antarctic territory which is questionable international
legitimacy at best the sun is always shining on at least one of these territories in fact
it's almost always shining on over two of them at 1300 utc when the sun is at midday over britain
the sun shines on all of these territories four hours earlier when the sun is at midday over the
british ocean territories the sun still shines on a criterion decay off the coast of cyprus and
saint helena in the south atlantic but every night right around midnight the sun sets on the cayman
islands and doesn't rise over the british ocean territory until just after 1am for that one hour
the little pitcairn islands in the south pacific are the only british territory under the sun
the four islands that make up the piccaron islands have a total land area of 18 square miles
smaller than disney world and are inhabited by only a few dozen people the direct descendants
of the mutineers from the hms bounty the islands are more than 6 500 kilometers from their nearest
t-sipping neighbors in the falklands and are the only british soil over nearly half the planet
the islands became notorious in 2004 when a third of the adult male population including the mayor
were convicted of child abuse coincidentally this makes it the place with the highest crime rate in
the world as awful as the islands may be they remain part of the british empire and unless
they're kicked out the two-century-long british day will continue but this doesn't seem likely
a big part of the trial of the child abusers centered on whether or not the islands were even
british to which the court adamantly declared they were the island was literally founded by mutineers
who burned their british ship as a big fu to the empire and then a six of the island got arrested
for crimes and britain still won't give them up so chances are they never will so does this mean the
day will last forever well despite britain's best wishes there's more than one way to force the sun
to set on the picaran islands sea levels could rise by as much as two and a half meters by 2100
in the last decade more than a dozen islands have been swallowed up by the sea and besides rising
seas powerful storms can wipe an island off the face of the map in 2018 as hurricane malacca was
making its way across the pacific it passed over the hawaiian islands including an archipelago
about 900 kilometers northwest of honolulu strong surges from molaka flooded the shallow islands
one of which completely disappeared into the ocean luckily for the british the picarin
islands will never flood the actual picarin island the only of the four islands with people
rises more than 300 meters above the pacific and is made of hard molten rock which keeps it
from eroding away so that's it the island will never be cast into the shadows well maybe not if
the moon has anything to say about it in april of 2432 the island will experience its first
total solar eclipse since the mutineers first arrived we can track eclipses about a thousand
years into the future after which predicting the path of the eclipse over the earth's surface
becomes pretty unreliable especially for an island 3.2 kilometers across its longest length but as of
right now this is the only total solar eclipse we know of coming for the island but if the british
are known for three things it's bad weather even worse teeth and being incredibly stubborn
brits are known for having a stiff upper lip and not even the moon will keep them down
luckily for the empire the eclipse happens outside of that one hour window so some light will fall on
the cayman islands of the caribbean where they'll only see a partial eclipse no total eclipse for
the next thousand years will pass over the picaran islands during that crucial hour to end the streak
if the uk keeps its territories and borders it can stretch out the daylight for a long long time
but not forever statistically sometime in the next few millennia an eclipse will come for the island
and the sun will finally even if only momentarily set on the british empire unless they managed to
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